Crazy Butch Gang & Rabbi

Crazy Butch during the 90’s was considered to be Manhattan’s Lower East Side’s youngest mobsters. At the age of 8, his parents had abandoned him and hence, had become a street urchin, living on the streets. He met a smart abandoned dog on the road and had named it ‘Rabbi’. He taught the dog special tricks to fetch bags from women and run across the streets to come to the place where he was hiding and empty its contents and give the dog a bone as reward. He succeed a lot and slowly made a gang comprising of teenage and pre-teen crooks that he named ‘Crazy Butch Gang’.

With the cash accumulated, he purchased a huge cycle to carry out his next scheme. He would pedal his cycle throughout the crowd and have his dog and gang to follow him. On approaching a target, he plowed the bike onto the unsuspecting pedestrian, mostly a female and shouted for the accident, for which a crowd would gather, during which his gang would empty every person’s pockets, while Rabi grabbed the victim’s handbag and all gang members scattered in various directions to meet later on Forsyth Street, their headquarters for dividing the profits.

His entering the mafia gang

With age, he along with his gang got much bolder, thereby attracting Five Points Gangs’s attention. When word was out that he was involved in pickpocketing a Five Point gangster and the stealing of some of their relatives had caused the other gang to get infuriated, Butch went to check his gang’s defenses. His gang were actually seen to be defenseless. For neutralizing Five Pointers, who had been chasing his gang constantly, he associated himself with Monk Eastman Gang, arch enemy of the Five Pointers.

Downfall

Everything went alright, until he came across The Darby Kid, a female shoplifter. Both loved each other, but her boyfriend called Harry the Soldier, got jealous and shot Butch dead. This automatically led the Butch Gang to disperse, with some joining the other gangs that existed in Lower East Side and few going solo. Big Jack Zelig is considered to be one member of this gang, who was popular with the police officials as ‘New York’s toughest man’, had made it big time. After the imprisonment of Monk Eastman, he went on to head Eastman Gang. But on 15th October 1912, he shot himself. As for Rabbi, there was no news about the dog and its whereabouts.